Heavy load transported by night to Duisburg: thyssenkrupp Steel takes delivery of a new stretcher-leveler gear unit for cold rolling mill

An extremely heavy load was transported by night along the roads of North Rhine-Westphalia earlier this week as thyssenkrupp Steel Europe took delivery of a new stretcher-leveler gear unit at its Duisburg site. The 43 ton special gear unit is needed in the cold rolling mill, where it will help ensure that products meet the very highest quality standards. Stretching and smoothing prepares the scale-covered hot-rolled steel optimally for the pickling and rolling process. “We invest continuously in upgrading our equipment,” says Holger Unewisse, manager of the cold rolling mill. “But even for us, a gear unit of this size is something out of the ordinary. There are only a handful of them worldwide. The stretcher gearbox is a necessary and important investment with a direct impact on the quality of our products.” Following cold rolling, the final production step is usually a coating process such as galvanizing to allow the production of corrosion-resistant parts for the auto industry.

The stretcher-leveler gear unit was supplied by a specialist manufacturer from the region, the Bottrop-based company KWE. “This was something special for us too. It’s one of the biggest gear units we’ve ever made,” says Hans-Georg Dieckmann, commercial manager at KWE.